Stepson’s meat cleaver threat:
‘I’ll slam this into your head’

A man who threatened his stepdad with a meat cleaver claiming he had been cheated out of an inheritance from his mother has been spared jail.

Mark Isaac, 46, of Kirkham Avenue, Marton, turned up on the doorstep of his stepdad’s bungalow brandishing the 10in weapon at 3.30pm on April 29.

Thinking it was Evans Halshaw returning his car from servicing, Isaac’s stepfather went to the door to check.

At first he did not recognise his estranged stepson, and asked what the man wanted.

Isaac started waving the meat cleaver in the air, shouting: “I came here with the intention of slamming this into your head.

“You should recognise me. It’s Mark.”

Charlie Brown, prosecuting, said: “At that point the penny dropped.

“The defendant asked for the (victim’s) son’s telephone number – but knowing there was ill feeling between them he refused.

“Isaac took the meat cleaver and placed it with the point on the man’s forehead, saying ‘if you don’t give it me I’ll do what I came here to do.’

“He then lowered it to rest with the point on his chin which persuaded him to go inside and give him the telephone number.”

Inside the house, Isaac started speaking about his stepbrothers, claiming they owed him £50,000, which the stepfather took to refer to money Isaac wrongly believed had been left by his mother.

As the two men stood inside the bungalow the doorbell rang as his car was returned from the garage, and Isaac walked off.

Isaac pleaded guilty to affray and was also sentenced for two public order offences after he verbally and racially abused staff on a train travelling up from London.

Recorder Michael Blakey, sentencing, said he was minded to pass an immediate custodial sentence.

However after hearing Isaac had remained crime-free and complied with the terms of a suspended sentence imposed for threatening his ex-partner with a machete after she terminated a pregnancy, he said: “It seems that if there is something hanging over your head and you have support, in general terms, you are able to behave.”

He handed him an 18-month sentence, suspended for two years, with a 35-day rehabilitation requirement and 70 hours’ unpaid work.